Dylan Thomas

Before I Knocked - Poem by Dylan Thomas

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Before I knocked and flesh let enter,With liquid hands tapped on the womb,I who was as shapeless as the waterThat shaped the Jordan near my homeWas brother to Mnetha's daughterAnd sister to the fathering worm.

I who was deaf to spring and summer,Who knew not sun nor moon by name,Felt thud beneath my flesh's armour,As yet was in a molten formThe leaden stars, the rainy hammerSwung by my father from his dome.

I knew the message of the winter,The darted hail, the childish snow,And the wind was my sister suitor;Wind in me leaped, the hellborn dew;My veins flowed with the Eastern weather;Ungotten I knew night and day.

As yet ungotten, I did suffer;The rack of dreams my lily bonesDid twist into a living cipher,And flesh was snipped to cross the linesOf gallow crosses on the liverAnd brambles in the wringing brains.

My throat knew thirst before the structureOf skin and vein around the wellWhere words and water make a mixtureUnfailing till the blood runs foul;My heart knew love, my belly hunger;I smelt the maggot in my stool.

And time cast forth my mortal creatureTo drift or drown upon the seasAcquainted with the salt adventureOf tides that never touch the shores.I who was rich was made the richerBy sipping at the vine of days.

I, born of flesh and ghost, was neitherA ghost nor man, but mortal ghost.And I was struck down by death's feather.I was a mortal to the lastLong breath that carried to my fatherThe message of his dying christ.

You who bow down at cross and altar,Remember me and pity HimWho took my flesh and bone for armourAnd doublecrossed my mother's womb.

Dylan Thomas always young and rebel.Dylan Thomas some kind of modern Rimbaud, bohemian and loner as if he was possesed by the POET cliché.And this is a good example of his anxious and almost hopeless poetry.
It must be hard to charge that talent on his back.
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Amazing poem - especially considering Thomas was a teenager when he wrote it. Already the genius was finding its way to the page! He was an astounding man who died too young - but then he always thought he would. Who else can throw words together with such effect? Not many. A true celtic legend.
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